Proposal: keep the previous page as a "menu"

[markmiro]

I wanted to use an iframe, but GitHub doesn't allow it. They're smart because I could be running a clickjacking operation and of course GitHub is protecting themselves here. However, this situation is a bit of a tragedy because the the early HTML spec clearly anticipated that people would like to embed pages within pages.

For example, Google could benefit by making it easier to click through search results:

I'm proposing to have a way for a website to preserve existing context as users clicks around. There's an accessibility concern here too. Have you ever walked into a room and forgotten why you went there? Retaining a menu from the previous page could help you remember that your main goal isn't to be on the new page, but to remember that this page is merely one of several pages you might want to check.

This pattern is common in UIs:

On mobile, iOS doesn't show the left sidebar since there's no room for it.

Many people have their content spread all over the internet. People have GitHub accounts, Twitter, and posts on blogging services. With this being the case, it's hard for us to own a corner of the web. Many people are happy enough to use sites like Linktree.

I suspect their popularity grew because these kinds of pages feel a lot less silly than they do on the desktop:

Now imagine if pages like this could serve as menus into other pages. If there's no room to show the menu (like on mobile), then the browser should navigate to the new page as it does today.

Many pages have a lot of unused horizontal space on the desktop, and many pages are also responsive. These qualities of the modern web can make it possible for many websites to function as menus into other pages without many changes.